


forgive us our trespasses

by prosodiical



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Genre: Bad Decisions, Emotional Manipulation, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: Zelenin makes a different choice. It isn't necessarily a better one.





	forgive us our trespasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surskitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surskitty/gifts).



> Thanks to K for the beta!

_Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name._

Zelenin brought her grandmother's bible in her personal effects, when the Schwarzwelt first began to spread. Now, it's lost with the rest of the Elve, to the demons which crawl this realm; the World of Ruin, she thinks, is not so much exaggeration as fact. But she's found a strange new discontent with the steady recitation of her prayers in this place, though she believes more, now, than she ever had before.

After all, demons exist, but then so do angels, the messengers of the Lord.

Rising from her knees, Zelenin leaves her room and takes the long route to the showers, checking on the progress of the crew as she goes. She's distracted somewhat by Chen's Forma research, and spends more time than she expects examining Arthur's running calculations on their current anti-de Sitter space and what will be needed for their next plane-jump. By the time she actually gets to the showers, the Red Sprite's fixed day-night cycle has passed later than she expected, and the hallways are eerily empty, the dim lights spaced evenly in the corners casting no shadows at all.

It's better in the communal shower room, though not by much. Zelenin still struggles to conceive of exactly how much they'd lost in their initial jump, the good scientists and soldiers she had known now gone, but in the still graveyard-shift silence of the ship it weighs heavily on her mind. And it's not only that, she knows, but the creatures who haunt her dreams - the slow, gurgling scream of another associate - another friend - dying in the most awful of ways.

She's half-undressed when she sees it: a flash of white out of the corner of her eye. Preemptively, Zelenin says, "Hello," before she really sees her, a young, pretty woman in a pale blue dress and an entirely unfamiliar face.

Zelenin knows immediately that she's not human. It's that she knows every one of the Red Sprite’s remaining skeleton of a crew, that there’s been no recourse for rescue of any other human; it’s the odd way her skin prickles like it has since Mitra’s palace, without the comforting sense of the Divine that Mastema and her Power bring. But her Demonica is lying on the floor, her summoning program inaccessible, and the demon says, incongruously polite, "Hello, Zelenin."

"What do you want with me?" Zelenin asks, and inches toward her Demonica's helmet. The woman - demon, she reminds herself, for all that she could pass as any person on this ship - watches her, mouth curving in a faintly amused smile. "Demon."

"Not entirely," the demon says, and steps closer, her bare feet on the shower room's tiled floor. "You can call me Louisa. But that doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"'Not entirely' doesn't mean no," Zelenin says. She resists the urge to cross her arms over her chest, though she feels terribly vulnerable with her skin bare, her neck exposed, standing there in her military-issue bra. "You’re a demon, aren’t you?”

"I am as much a demon as that foolish Mastema," the demon says, and takes another step forward. She’s unthreatening in her presence, slighter than Zelenin, her long hair falling forward over her face, but Zelenin knows better than to think she’s all that she appears to be. Her expression is flat, but there’s an unworried curiosity in the glint of her eyes. "Tell me, what lies have you been fed? I can already see the fervour in your heart."

"Mastema has proven himself," Zelenin says. "I wouldn’t trust anything in this world without reason. You aren't an angel."

"Perhaps," the woman says, "not now."

Zelenin feels fixed in place, every muscle in her body frozen and tense and still. The demon's bare feet make no noise on the floor, her dress gauzy and lightweight, fluttering around her knees as she closes the distance between them in barely a eyeblink of time, and Zelenin's breath is caught in her chest as she looks into her face, a strange, distorted mirror of her own.

"What would you give up," the woman says, "to satisfy your own emptiness? You couch it in compassion, but do you think peace is all it's proclaimed to be?"

"We brought this," Zelenin says. "The Schwarzwelt is modelled after our excesses; it's a punishment, isn't it? But humanity doesn't deserve - "

"Spare me your rhetoric," Louisa says, and reaches out, almost mockingly gentle, to tuck Zelenin's hair behind her ear. "I'm not on their side. You already know that. But I could be on yours."

Zelenin exhales a breath that hurts her lungs, a shaky, terrified thing. "What do you want from me?"

"I want," Louisa says, deliberate, "you weak-willed humans to stop reaching for an uncaring God. I want you to see the genesis of your new world, to experience all that you were made to. There is one world, Zelenin, where your dissatisfaction turns you into a creature as myself, so distant from humankind you ache for individuality lost to eternal thoughtless joy, for the subjugation of all that you were - is that what you want?"

Zelenin wonders if it would help. Even knowing that angels exist, that God might be listening - there's still a terrible ache in her chest that won't stop lingering, the thought that perhaps she came out of Mitra's palace newly wrong. "What was I like?" she wonders, searching the demon's - angel's - face, and Louisa's mouth curves into a curious smile.

"A beautiful monster," she says, and kisses her.

Louisa's hand is alien and cold on Zelenin's jaw. Her warm, demanding mouth sends a strange frisson of adrenaline down Zelenin's spine; she tastes of the air before a storm, of the scent of blood and human flesh melted by acid in the air. And it's not unlike hearing Mastema talk, the echo behind his words of a symphony, or of the consideration in his friendly regard - Zelenin feels full with it, her nerves alight, her breath stolen from her by Louisa's mouth and the tiny pinpricks of pain from Louisa's fingernails digging into her hip, the shameful flush of her arousal sending goosebumps across her skin.

She shouldn't want this, but it's the only thing she's longed for since she left Bootes: control.

Zelenin bites at Louisa's mouth and feels her smile, atavistic; Louisa presses her back against the wall with a disconcerting strength, the cold of her inhuman skin through her thin dress like nothing Zelenin's felt before. She kisses Zelenin hard enough to bruise, like she's something to be devoured whole, and Zelenin doesn't know if she wants to yield or resist as her nerves spark like lightning, a tight curl of strange heat in her gut.

"So you do have bite," Louisa says, pulling back when all Zelenin wants is to pull her in closer, to bite bruises into her jaw and taste the skin of her thighs. Louisa looks completely unruffled despite the warm flush of blood Zelenin feels creeping down her own neck, the way her mouth feels swollen and red, and Zelenin wonders what would make her want; what would make her break. "That's good to know."

"I'm not on their side," Zelenin says, "but I'm not on yours, either."

"Not yet," Louisa says, and smiles.

* * *

Zelenin doesn't see her there again. There are rumors of her in the Red Sprite, a ghost occasionally in the corridors, but Zelenin isn't certain anyone's seen her - or knows precisely what she is. She holds the knowledge close and worries it like a loose tooth, Louisa's predictions, her promise that sounded like a threat. 

Mastema says nothing of her, but Zelenin feels a similar fullness of purpose under his flattering, alien regard. Is it God, she wonders, that speaks through him, or other angels, as lost as he? This world and its genesis haunts her dreams in slow creeping nightmares, and always, always, brings death and destruction and pain. There's nothing here that is good, nothing in the demons that makes her resolve waver - but. But.

Mastema says, " - the power to turn men into angels," and Zelenin feels herself fallen still.

"Please," she says, into the silence, "if I - do this, will I become a monster?"

"No," Mastema says, "not a monster, but a higher being, one of God's chosen. All of your pain and sadness and suffering will cease, Zelenin, and be replaced by peace and bountiful purpose."

Zelenin aches for it. She's been useless for so long, trying to find some way of stopping the spread of the Schwarzwelt, the end of her world; she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to go back, beautiful monster or not. But something stops her from saying it, and the silence drags on as Mastema regards her, the shape of his dark wings beautiful, stark and shadowed in the Demonica's faint green light.

"I'm sorry," Zelenin says, finally. "But if I'm to do this, would you mind if I took one last chance to tell everyone of my decision? I want them to know that this is the only way forward to save Ryan's squad."

"Your compassion for those who dwell in evil does you credit," Mastema says, and inclines his head. "I will wait here for your response."

Zelenin's not sure if it's compassion that takes her feet back to the doors of the Red Sprite's deck, or fear. She's wanted power to change the fateful fall of the world for so long that having the opportunity feels like a prayer made truth, but even so there are the inevitable consequences. Would she lose herself, becoming an angel, and yearn for peace so complete all thought was lost? Would she want to?

She drops to her knees, back in her quarters, and clasps her hands together. But the prayer that seemed so steady now seems like a question, and Zelenin finds no peace in her petition to God; it is Louisa who sticks in her thoughts like a burr she can't remove. She thinks of her, the angel fallen, and wonders if she still has her wings.

"Oh," says Louisa, and Zelenin's pulse stutters in her throat. "Aren't you sweet."

She's sitting on Zelenin's small sleeping cot, her legs tucked underneath her, her pale dress pooled on the military-straight sheets. She could be Zelenin, years younger, except that Zelenin has never looked at anyone with that expression, that strange, detached fondness in her sly, thoughtful eyes. "Louisa," Zelenin says, and Louisa's mouth tilts into a faint smile.

"There's so much faith in you," Louisa says, her voice low, an echo that makes Zelenin think of a thousand mouths, a thousand voices. "So much fear. Will you fall thoughtlessly in line with God's soldiers, to push his agenda for a world without conflict or individuality? Or have you already decided not to? You are here, after all."

"I want to save who I can," Zelenin says, "to fix the problems inherent in our world, but… I'm not sure if becoming an angel will make me forget who I was."

"Even that pitiful angel's crude attempt will keep you as yourself," Louisa says, "only more. Loyal to God's command, singer of His voice. Until all of your precious humanity lies docile under His grasp."

"But unleashing demons unto the world is a nightmare," Zelenin says. Her voice doesn't shake. "And angels must be capable of independent thought. You rebelled."

Louisa says, "Do not compare the shade of a creature you wish to become to me." 

Zelenin looks at her. She hasn't moved; she's still kneeling in front of Louisa's bent knees, and she feels her breath catch at the glimpse of something - greater, larger, more --

Louisa collects herself visibly, but now Zelenin has seen the power of the infinite that lies under her pale, near-human skin. Louisa says, "I was cast down. But you…"

Zelenin's heartbeat feels strangely steady, though she can hear the thump of it in her ears. "You are still an angel."

"Oh," Louisa says, and examines Zelenin with a curious, growing smile. "That would be interesting."

"I can't support your vision," Zelenin says, "not when I think it could be better. But if this power means I can save those men in Ryan's squad, and not be useless in this world - "

Louisa sets a finger on Zelenin's lips, and Zelenin has to remember to breathe. "And here I thought your other squadmate would be here," she says, "asking for my assistance, at my side. Perhaps he still will be. But it is clear you will walk this path, one way or another."

"Then," Zelenin says, and Louisa kisses her.

Perhaps Zelenin is praying. The ritual is in her head; the words, the meaning, the clutch of her heart: _Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil._

What is evil, in this world where everyone is misguided, where demons have brought to light the hate festering in human hearts? Zelenin has only herself. It has to be enough.

"Amen," she says, and closes her eyes.


End file.
